Introduction

Presidential elections were scheduled to take place in Afghanistan in May 2009. Controversially, President Hamid Karzai declared the country too unstable for elections at that time, and delayed elections until August. When the elections finally took place, they were wrought with fraud. After multiple delays in announcing results, election monitors threw out several hundred thousand contested votes. Afghan law requires a candidate to receive more than 50% of votes to win an election outright. The removed ballots cost him the simple majority, necessitating a run-off election with the second-place candidate Abdullah Abdullah.

Claiming an outright victory, Karzai initially refused to allow a run-off. Senator John Kerry was dispatched to Afghanistan to meet with Karzai. After several days of meetings, Karzai agreed to participate in the second election, which was set for November 7.

Ultimately, Abdullah Abdullah withdrew from the election, citing the impossibility of achieving fair elections. Shortly thereafter, President Obama called Karzai to congratulate him on his victory.

In the US, the Afghan elections were a key factor in on-going reconsiderations of the US strategy in Afghanistan. In a speech in London, General McChrystal, commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan, indicated that 40,000 additional troops would be necessary to conduct a successful counter-insurgency campaign. In Washington, planners doubted that any counter-insurgency could be successful without a credible partner in Kabul.

Background

A war led by a Democratic president creates dilemmas for ideologues. Petrocik (1996) suggests that Americans associate Democrats with effective domestic policy and Republicans with effective foreign policy. Potentially, a successful war effort led by a Democrat could compromise issue ownership on the part of Republicans. Conversely, if a case can be made that people who vote for Democrats are people who are disinclined to support a candidate who focuses on foreign policy, President Obama could be sacrificing his base of support by being seen to emphasize execution of the war in Afghanistan over a domestic issue like health care reform. Indeed, Petrocik would suggest that the very emphasis on foreign policy--regardless of Obama's effectiveness with it--would tend to favor Republican challengers in 2010 and 2012.

Incidentally, recent opinion polls suggest that support for the war in Afghanistan currently follows traditional assumptions about political dispositions:

Herman & Chomsky (1988) and Chomsky (2002) make a compelling case that American media tend to advance pro-Government and, in particular, pro-military-industrial-complex agendas. Herman & Chosky's comparisons of US media coverage of elections in countries with which the US has friendly or adversarial relations suggest that media will mirror US Government attitudes in "independent" coverage. Chomsky will extend this argument to claim that media will fail to report on pacifist or diplomatic opportunities in foreign policy, and instead advocate (at least by ommission of dissenting information) for militaristic and otherwise oggressive responses. Nunberg (2006) will adopt a similar approach, but do so specifically to demonstrate that illusory reality of the "liberal media," and to problematize Fox News's conservative bias being described as "Fair and Balanced."

In the context of the Afghan elections, we can anticipate several predictions:

  1. US media will be less likely to cover Afghan elections negatively than they would elections in a country like Iran.
  2. US media will pay less attention to strategic considerations like the integrity of the Afghan elections than to military decisions, like whether or not to send more troops.
  3. Information that would promote pacifist strategies in Afghanistan will be largely omitted from coverage.
  4. Conservative media will devote more coverage to the war than liberal media.

Method

As a test survey for this theory, samples were taken from the highest-rated primetime show on the three largest cable news networks:

Viewership data is provided below for one week during the study period for O'Reilly and Olberman. AC 360 is generally rated about 100,000 viewers below Olberman.

Fox News orients itself to a conservative audience. MSNBC orients itself in opposition to Fox, and general adopts liberal positions. CNN is the least overtly political among the three--at least as a network.

The shows were studied every five days beginning on September 30, 2009. In cases where a study day fell during a weekend (the shows broadcast Monday through Friday only), the Monday immediately after was used instead. Basic data were recorded from each broadcast. For the purposes of this study, these were:

For purposes of comparison, stories covered in the Afghan Islamic Press were also quantified. There are some methodological problems with this comparison. The source is print, rather than television. There is no way to reach equivalency on appeal to audience or to quantify factors like "minutes of coverage." There is no way to establish credibility for AIP relative to the American media. Further, AIP stories about the Afghan election are counted as a single reference. Meaning that 1 "reference" to the elections in AIP would actually contain much more information than 1 "reference" in American media. Nevertheless, it is hoped that the inclusion of some native Afghan media will at least offer a suggestive basis for comparison.

Results

Minutes of Coverage

An immediate observation is that MSNBC gives almost no coverage to Afghanistan issues. Attention varies widely on the other networks, but, significantly, there are several instances where no time is devoted to the Afghan war.

References to Election

Only CNN includes substantial discussion of the election, despite several critical events occuring during the study--including Kerry's success in convincing Karzai to participate in a run-off. Election-related news is clearly available through AIP. Compared with the amount of coverage of the war generally, this seems to support the assumption that US media would be more interested in military questions (e.g. sending more troops) than strategic ones (like establishing a credible democracy).

US Deaths

American audiences apparently receive little information about US deaths from Fox News and MSNBC. It is worth noting that Fox News's mention of American deaths came in the context of questioning Obama's motivations for attending a fallen heroes ceremony at Dover Air Force Base.

US deaths certainly seem relevant for considerations of sending more troops to war.

Ally Deaths

No US media reports on ally deaths. From a pacifist perspective, such information would be critical to evaluating the true impact of the war.

Taliban Deaths

No US media reports on Taliban deaths. Such numbers should, presumably, create a perception that American forces were succeeding in their prosecution of the Afghan war. Arguably, the ommission of this information is damaging to Obama, as voters have no basis for determining that he is successfully executing the war as Commander-in-Chief.

Discussion

Returning to previous questions, these preliminary findings suggest:

  1. While there is no data present that would allow a comparison to coverage of elections in other countries, the derth of references to the Afghan elections at least suggests that US media are not emphasizing a critique of Karzai's conduct during the Afghan elections. This supports, at least marginally, the prediction that US media will avoid negative coverage of elections in a country that the US Government is favorably disposed towards.
  2. The level of attention to Afghanistan issues compared with the absence of coverage of elections suggests that media are more focused on military considerations (like sending more troops) than strategic ones, such as the US mission in Afghanistan or larger questions of justice.
  3. Information that might discourage more pacifistically inclined Americans from adopting hawkish positions (such as information on civilian casualties) is ignored in US media completely. As a result, peace advocates have no basis in the national consciousness for advocacy.
  4. Liberal media pay almost no attention to the war. This denies liberal audiences any sense of the importance of the war or the realities of its execution. For supporters of Obama, there is no information available through MSNBC to argue that Obama has successfully led the war effort (c.f. the Gallup poll below, which tested Afghan perceptions of US leadership).

    This could suggest that presumably pro-Obama news coverage is actually damaging him by ignoring foreign policy issues that are a significant basis for evaluation of his presidency. Conversely, conservative media do follow the war to suit their audiences, but their focus on military rather than strategic issues (and lack of acknowledgement for potentially positive data like Taliban deaths) helps to discredit Obama for conservatives.

Again, these studies are only suggestive of broader trends. Much more data is necessary (and being compiled for future research) to make more conclusive arguments. Nonetheless, these preliminary data seem to support expectations generated by previous research.

References